


Love and Life in the Jungle

by minnpop



Category: Mozart in the Jungle (TV)
Genre: AU, F/M, First Meeting, awkwars meeting, before rodrigo becomes maestro, music teachers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-25
Updated: 2018-01-10
Packaged: 2018-05-16 03:56:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5812942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minnpop/pseuds/minnpop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hailey Rutledge is a struggling oboist in New York City, with a dream of one day playing in the New York Symphony Orchestra. She’s almost content with teaching oboe to rich kids, but can’t help feeling that she’s meant for more than horny twelve-year-olds using their lessons to make a pass at her. Rodrigo de Souza has toured around the world, playing for large crowds of adoring fans. Dubbed a musical prodigy in his youth, he shifted his focus on teaching music in New York, hoping to encourage kids with the passion for music to pursue their dreams, all the while holding onto his childhood dream of one day being able to conduct the New York Symphony Orchestra. One day, at a concert for two of their students, a spark ignites between the two.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I started this story almost two years ago and I'm coming back to finish it somehow. When I first started writing this there were only six Mozart in the Jungle fics on this site. While it's taken me years to complete this, and by no means is this a work of art, this is my contribution to the fandom.

_ I  _ literally _ cannot afford to be late _ , Hailey thought as she rushed through the halls of the empty school hallway. The concert had already started, she could hear a violin echoing through the halls, the sound getting closer with each step she took. 

It wasn’t her fault that she was late. She had left the apartment she and her best friend, Liz, shared over two hours ago. The train ride barely took twenty minutes, but Hailey had been planning on eating at the Mexican place down the street from the school, then strolling through the aisles of the secondhand bookstore across the street to look for a gift to give Duncan after the concert. How could she have known she’d be stuck in a train for an hour and a half? Most people would laugh at the irony, but not Duncan’s parents.

Rich people had a way of finding fault in everything people they employed did. Hailey had learned this the hard way, when she first started teaching oboe. One family had hired her five days a week for two hours, hoping their daughter would somehow become an expert on playing her oboe, but when she could barely play Mary Had a Little Lamb and Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star at her school’s talent show—who would have known that spending more than half of the time of your scheduled oboe lessons texting friends and threatening to get your oboe teacher fired if she snitched would leave you so unprepared?—her parents blamed Hailey. They had even gone so far as telling their friends looking for a music instructor for their kid—because apparently every rich person forces their kid to learn an instrument in order to look good for Ivy League schools, whether they want to or not—that Hailey Rutledge, "wouldn’t know an oboe from her own elbow.” She had been blacklisted for almost a year until Duncan found her flyer at a laundromat. He later admitted to her that the only reason he had been there was because it was a common place for people at his school to skip school and play arcade games. Luck was on her side that day.

As she turned a corner,  _ please let it be the last one, _ I don’t think I can walk anymore in these heels, the violin stopped playing. The door to the auditorium was wide open, and as she stepped into the darkened room the crowd burst into applause for the little girl on stage. Seeing that some people had stood up to applaud the girl, Hailey took that moment to sneak into the room, clapping as if she had witnessed the performance.The auditorium was packed, as Hailey looked around she could see people begin to return to their seats, so she frantically searched for a seat in the back of the auditorium—because nobody really wants to be  _ that _ person, the one who has no regard for anyone else and walks straight to the front of a packed room like nothing’s wrong. They say the walk of shame’s bad, but Hailey honestly believed that anyone who did that  _ deserved  _ to have people talk shit about them—and found one, on the outer edge of the back row, next to a man who was still clapping.

_ Well, at least I only have to deal with one person noticing I’m late, _ Hailey thought as she scooted into the row and took the empty seat.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I keep forgetting to upload this and I finally have time, so here this is before I forget again.

Rodrigo sat down right after a young woman brushed off the skirt of her navy blue dress and filled the empty seat next to him. She had avoided his gaze as she quickly sat down, fixing her eyes on the stage in front of them. If she didn’t look so out of breath he would have made a comment about her rude entrance, but her cheeks were rosy and she was breathing rapidly. Plus, she  _ had _ missed three performances. Whoever she was here for would be pissed if they found out she’d missed theirs. Rodrigo still remembered how he had been devastated whenever his parents or Abuela had missed his performances when he was younger, and that had rarely happened.

Deciding to give her the benefit of the doubt, he leaned over and spoke. “Excuse me, Miss, but who are you here for? Three people have already played, and you look like you’re scared to death of missing someone play.” He meant it as a joke, but the look she gave him made him regret his words. 

“Hey, hey, hey,” he whispered, nervously, as the next performer positioned himself to play his flute, “I was just kidding. Here,” he handed her his copy of the evening’s program,”this kid playing the flute is only the fourth person, there are fifteen people playing tonight, so the odds of you missing are...um...wait a second.” Rodrigo lifted up his hands in order to compute the percentage on his fingers. Math had never been his best subject, in fact, he sucked at everything  _ except _ music classes, but he really didn’t want the girl next to him to start crying. 

Drowning in a sea of numbers, and starting to get a headache, Rodrigo was surprised to hear the girl laugh. It was a sweet sound, laced with exhaustion, but still clearly amused.

“About twenty-six percent,” she said, a shy smile creeping onto her face as she studied the program. “And no, thank whoever decided on the order of the concert, Duncan hasn’t gone on yet.” She let out a sigh of relief and held the program out to return it to him.

“No, no. It’s yours. This Duncan better appreciate you being here because you look like you ran across the city to get here. Who is he, anyway?” Rodrigo asked.

“Um...isn’t that prying? We just met… literally two minutes ago,” Hailey stuttered, surprised at the sincerity in the tone of the man’s voice. Sincerity was a rarity in New York City, so much so that she had almost forgotten that people could actually care, and not be planning eighteen different ways they could turn any given conversation into a way for them to benefit. 

“Yes. It is prying, but I don’t see anything wrong with that. I want to know more about the beautiful young woman who’s sitting next to me, and why she was so terrified of being late to a middle school concert. It’s okay, though. I’ll go first. I’m Rodrigo. I got here—on time, unlike  _ someone,” _ he feigned a stern look at the young woman next to him,” because one of my students is playing today. Okay. I’m done it’s your turn.”

“My turn?” Hailey asked.

“Yes, your turn. I finished talking about me, you’re supposed to go next. If you think about it, you’re actually being really rude right now. First you show up late to a concert that you came to see to watch, who was it, again—Dustin? Dunkin?—whoever he is, you came to see him and were late, and now here I am, a music teacher who really should be listening to the boy on stage butchering Clair de Lune so horrifically Debussy is rolling in his grave right now, here I am asking you about yourself and you’re not answering.” 

Hailey didn’t know whether to laugh or hit this stranger—what was his name again? Rodrigo? It sounded Hispanic, which would go along with the accent—in the face. After a moment of weighing her options she sighed.

“I’m Hailey,” she held out a hand for Rodrigo to shake. His hand was soft yet his grip was strong, catching her off guard.

“Hi-Lai,” Rodrigo said, almost testing the way the name felt on his lips. The tone of his voice invited Hailey to continue telling her story.

“Yes, Hailey Rutledge. I’m also a teacher, oboe. Dustin’s one of my students.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I've had half of this written for almost two years. I tried my best to salvage this chapter.

“A teacher,” Rodrigo said with a smile, “I should have known. Who else would be sneaking into a concert. If these parents are late they usually don’t even bother showing up.”  
Hailey shrugged, from what Duncan had told her about his parents they fell right into Rodrigo’s classification. To be honest, she kind of felt bad for Duncan sometimes, in fact, if his parents weren’t paying her she’d tell them off. (She liked the kid, but at the same time she held not living on the streets in higher regard than not selling out).  
“Trust me, I wouldn’t be here if my job didn’t count on it,” She said, digging through the purse she brought. Last week she’d hidden a ton of granola bars in it, but today she couldn’t find even a wrapper. She thought being on a train for over an hour sucked, but sitting through a middle school concert while she was starving would top that.  
“Shit,” she murmured under her breath.  
Rodrigo looked at her, “Is everything okay?”  
Hailey nervously looked up from her bag. She thought she must have looked like those meth heads she saw in the subway in the morning, the ones who were always looking for something that wasn’t there and talked to themselves.  
Rodrigo repeated himself, “Hai-Lai, is everything okay?”  
“Yeah,” she answered him a little louder than she should have. Two people in the row in front of them shushed her. “Yeah,” she whispered, “I’m okay, it’s just…”  
Her stomach growled loudly before she could finish her answer.  
“Shit,” she muttered, finally giving up on her search and looking at Rodrigo. “Everything’s okay. My stomach is just being a little bitch because I haven’t eaten all day.”  
“You do know,” Rodrigo looked at her, a small smile forming on his face, “that there’s a Salvadorian restaurant across the street, right?”  
“Really? I've never seen it,” Another growl errupted from her stomach. “Fuuuuuuuuck,” she groaned.  
Rodrigo looked at her and laughed.  
“You know, I could go outside and call them if you’re really that hungry. Their pupusas are like a kiss from God,” he emphasized his point by doing the sign of the cross, complete with a kiss of his fingertips.  
Hailey felt a smile rising up. This man was unusual. He was obviously older than her, the touch of grey in his hair gave it away, but he didn’t seem stuffy like a normal adult. While she put on a facade of having her life put together Hailey knew that she was too much of a mess to be considered an adult. (Who has their shit together in their twenties?) Rodrigo, however, seemed like someone who didn’t have a clue what life was about but didn’t care. It was in his eyes. His eyes did that thing Tyra Banks said was important for models, he kinda did look like one of the younger guys on the boxes for men’s hair dye she and Lizzie always made fun of at Walgreens, that eye smiling thing. It made him look carefree and a small part of Hailey wanted to see if this assumption was true.  
“No,” she told him, giving up one the search for snacks, “I think I can make it through the rest of the concert. How much longer can it…” her stomach growled again, and she wanted to crawl into a hole and hide.  
Rodrigo looked at her and then to the stage. “My student is coming up. Her name is Karolina. I’ll be right back. If I miss her could you tell me how she did? I know she’ll do well, she plays with the blood, but still. I’m her teacher.” Hailey got up to let him out into the aisle. “Five minutes, Hi-Lai. I’ll be right back.” He flashed her a smile and snuck out of the auditorium, flinching as he entered a brightly lit hallway.  
Great, Hailey thought to herself, your Chewbacca noises scared him off. It’s a wonder why Liz thinks we’re gonna both die alone.


End file.
